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Daily News · 3 July 1994

CP-1994-010

Arafat’s mixed review

Backers watch and wait

By Judith Colp Rubin, Special to The News, Shati Refugee Camp

Arafat’s mixed review — Daily News, 3 July 1994
Daily News · 3 July 1994

Transcribed from the clipping

“SHATI REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip — Gaza resident Jamil Saadoun is a long-time supporter of Yassir Arafat who was caught up in the emotional whirl of the PLO chairman’s return to his native soil this weekend after 30 years in exile. But the 38-year-old translator and father of three also considers himself a realist about the man who has led the political struggle for the Palestinian people… ‘He makes decisions by asking his companions around him and then just decides himself,’ said Saadoun. ‘He must make decisions more democratically.’… ‘He didn’t speak about what he would do in the meantime, about finding housing and jobs for people of Gaza,’ said Saadoun… ‘He needs financial help from the Arabs, Europeans and American world,’ said Mahmoud Abu Kahr, who was sitting outside his small convenience store near the camp… Nearby, pharmacist Mahmoud Taleb, standing behind a counter filled primarily with Israeli medicines, said he thought Arafat would be a better leader than the heads of such Arab nations as Libya, Jordan and Syria… ‘If Arafat will be good for the people, so we will love him; if not, the elections will change that,’ shrugged Nazan Nabhaa, a student.… ‘Arafat is not a good leader, because he does not adhere to the Islamic principles,’ said a member of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas who would identify himself only as Abu Khalid… ‘Hamas is too young,’ argued fisherman Abu Kahr.”

Photograph caption

PLO CHAIRMAN Yasser Arafat hugs disabled Palestinian man who was one of about 20 in wheelchairs who welcomed Arafat to the Gaza self-rule area yesterday.

Context added by this archive

Twenty disabled Palestinians were assembled to welcome Arafat home, and the man he embraces in the photograph is the only person on this page who is not named. Six ordinary Gazans are: a translator, a shopkeeper, a pharmacist standing behind a counter of Israeli medicines, a student, a fisherman, and a Hamas member who would give only a first name. All six are criticising Arafat, four days into his return.

Cite this item

"Arafat’s mixed review," Daily News, 3 July 1994. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1994-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1994-010

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1994-010.

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